I'LL KILL A CRIMINAL FOR YR CHILD

Crowd pleaser,

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PUTTING THE “DICK” IN “FOSDICK”

That last entry, of course, was from the legendary Al Capp cartoon Fearless Fosdick, which was a padody of Dick Tracy.

Which I mention because that panel, in context, is meant to be funny.

As is this one.



The joke being that Fosdick thinks the guy whose head he blew off was his Arch-nemesis Anyface, who can change his face at will. Only it wasn’t really him.

Funny, see?

Well, it was in the 1940s.

Anyway, it’s interesting that you could get away with things like that in a daily comic strip that ran in family newspapers – not cops shooting innocent people in the head so much as writing sharp-edged satire (which Capp was awfully good at). Granted, that was before Jesus invented the Comics Code Authority, but still ...

For more information, see this post about how Al Capp basically paved the way for Mad magazine.

See also: Five select moments in comic book censorship.

Shoot first,

This is dF